The Skeptic is suffering from Blogger Fatigue and after reading this I think it's just gotten to be too much.

I'll going on holiday for a week or so. I'll be back after I get good and tanned.

I might start drinking again too......

Say hello to Freedom Rider.

Like father, not like son:

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Ray McGovern and David MacMichael, two former CIA analysts with the agency for more than a quarter of a century. We’ll be right back with that in a minute. (MUSIC BREAK) You are listening to Democracy Now! Ray McGovern, our guest, former CIA analyst. You were with the CIA for…

RAY MCGOVERN: 27 years.

AMY GOODMAN: And you worked directly under George Bush

RAY MCGOVERN: I did when he was director for CIA and later I saw him every other morning for a couple of years in the 80’s when he was Vice President.

AMY GOODMAN: Doing what?

RAY MCGOVERN: I was one of the briefers who prepared the President’s daily brief and delivered it and briefed people one on one with the senior officials downtown.

AMY GOODMAN:Now one of the things we are talking about a lot and seeing a lot is that the same people that were there during the Reagan-Bush years and even before, the Wolfowitzes the Rumsfelds, Cheneys were there then. What was George Bush’s view of these people then?

RAY MCGOVERN: Well, you know it’s really interesting. When we saw these people coming back in town, all of us said who were around in those days said, oh my god, ‘the crazies’ are back – ‘the crazies’ – that’s how we referred to these people.

AMY GOODMAN: Did George Bush refer to them that way?

RAY MCGOVERN: That’s the way everyone referred to them.

AMY GOODMAN: Including George Bush?

RAY MCGOVERN: Well, when Wolfowitz prepared that defense posture statement in 1991, where he elucidated the strategic vision that has now been implemented, Jim Baker, Secretary of State, Brent Scowcroft, security advisor to George Bush, and George Bush said hey, that thing goes right into the circular file. Suppress that thing, get rid of it. Somebody had the presence of mind to leak it and so that was suppressed. But now to see that arise out of the ashes and be implemented. while we start a war against Iraq, I wonder what Bush the first is really thinking. Because these were the same guys that all of us referred to as ‘the crazies’.

AMY GOODMAN: Including George Bush........

How did this country get taken over by the neo-cons?

The Israel lobby itself is divided into Jewish and Christian wings. Wolfowitz and Feith have close ties to the Jewish-American Israel lobby. Wolfowitz, who has relatives in Israel, has served as the Bush administration's liaison to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Feith was given an award by the Zionist Organization of America, citing him as a "pro-Israel activist." While out of power in the Clinton years, Feith collaborated with Perle to coauthor a policy paper for Likud that advised the Israeli government to end the Oslo peace process, reoccupy the territories, and crush Yasser Arafat's government.

Such experts are not typical of Jewish-Americans, who mostly voted for Gore in 2000. The most fervent supporters of Likud in the Republican electorate are Southern Protestant fundamentalists. The religious right believes that God gave all of Palestine to the Jews, and fundamentalist congregations spend millions to subsidize Jewish settlements in the occupied territories.

The final corner of the neoconservative pentagon is occupied by several right-wing media empires, with roots -- odd as it seems -- in the British Commonwealth and South Korea. Rupert Murdoch disseminates propaganda through his Fox television network. His magazine, the Weekly Standard -- edited by William Kristol, the former chief of staff of Dan Quayle (vice president, 1989-1993) -- acts as a mouthpiece for defense intellectuals such as Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith and Woolsey as well as for Sharon's government. The National Interest (of which I was executive editor, 1991-1994) is now funded by Conrad Black, who owns the Jerusalem Post and the Hollinger empire in Britain and Canada.

Strangest of all is the media network centered on the Washington Times -- owned by the South Korean messiah (and ex-convict) the Rev. Sun Myung Moon -- which owns the newswire UPI. UPI is now run by John O'Sullivan, the ghostwriter for Margaret Thatcher who once worked as an editor for Conrad Black in Canada. Through such channels, the "gotcha!" style of right-wing British journalism, and its Europhobic substance, have contaminated the US conservative movement.

The corners of the neoconservative pentagon were linked together in the 1990s by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), run by Kristol out of the Weekly Standard offices. Using a P.R. technique pioneered by their Trotskyist predecessors, the neocons published a series of public letters whose signatories often included Wolfowitz and other future members of the Bush foreign policy team. They called for the U.S. to invade and occupy Iraq and to support Israel's campaigns against the Palestinians (dire warnings about China were another favorite). During Clinton's two terms, these fulminations were ignored by the foreign policy establishment and the mainstream media. Now they are frantically being studied.

How did the neocon defense intellectuals -- a small group at odds with most of the U.S. foreign policy elite, Republican as well as Democratic -- manage to capture the Bush administration? Few supported Bush during the presidential primaries. They feared that the second Bush would be like the first -- a wimp who had failed to occupy Baghdad in the first Gulf War and who had pressured Israel into the Oslo peace process -- and that his administration, again like his father's, would be dominated by moderate Republican realists such as Powell, James Baker and Brent Scowcroft. They supported the maverick senator John McCain until it became clear that Bush would get the nomination.

Then they had a stroke of luck -- Cheney was put in charge of the presidential transition (the period between the election in November and the accession to office in January). Cheney used this opportunity to stack the administration with his hard-line allies. Instead of becoming the de facto president in foreign policy, as many had expected, Secretary of State Powell found himself boxed in by Cheney's right-wing network, including Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Bolton and Libby.

The neocons took advantage of Bush's ignorance and inexperience. Unlike his father, a Second World War veteran who had been ambassador to China, director of the CIA, and vice president, George W was a thinly educated playboy who had failed repeatedly in business before becoming the governor of Texas, a largely ceremonial position (the state's lieutenant governor has more power). His father is essentially a northeastern moderate Republican; George W, raised in west Texas, absorbed the Texan cultural combination of machismo, anti-intellectualism and overt religiosity. The son of upper-class Episcopalian parents, he converted to Southern fundamentalism in a midlife crisis. Fervent Christian Zionism, along with an admiration for macho Israeli soldiers that sometimes coexists with hostility to liberal Jewish-American intellectuals, is a feature of the Southern culture.

The younger Bush was tilting away from Powell and toward Wolfowitz ("Wolfie," as he calls him) even before 9/11 gave him something he had lacked: a mission in life other than following in his dad's footsteps. There are signs of estrangement between the cautious father and the crusading son: Last year, veterans of the first Bush administration, including Baker, Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger, warned publicly against an invasion of Iraq without authorization from Congress and the U.N.

We can all use a good laugh once in a while. Here's a good one:

Republicans have seldom shied from an embrace of manliness. The New York Times recently ran a report on the new Bush re-election headquarters. It explained that the offices display two large photos: one of President Bush "sweating and looking rugged in a T-shirt and cowboy hat"; another of Ronald Reagan "also looking rugged in a cowboy hat." And all this was before Arnold Schwarzenegger decided to run for governor of California. Yup, that's the Republican Party.

Of course, George W. Bush is famous for his "compassionate conservatism." He is capable of great tenderness of expression, much of it related, no doubt, to his triumph over alcohol and his religious awakening. But Bush as hombre has been the dominant theme of his post-September 11 presidency........

~snip~

The last couple of years have been replete with Bush toughness--tough talk, tough action, toughness in a tough job. "They've got a problem on their hands," he said of the terrorists. "We're gonna find 'em. And if they're hidin', we're gonna smoke 'em out. And we'll bring 'em to justice." He is quite taken with this "smoking out" business. Standing in the White House with the governor of Louisiana, he said, "I know the governor likes to hunt rabbits down in Louisiana. Sometimes those rabbits think they can hide from the governor. But, eventually, he smokes 'em out and gets 'em. And that's exactly what's happening to Mr. bin Laden and all the murderers that he's trying to hide in Afghanistan."

He can be cocky, certainly--sort of defiant-cocky, righteous-cocky. In March 2002, he told an audience, "Obviously, as you well know, we found some of them [the terrorists] bunched up in the Shahikote Mountains [of Afghanistan]. And we sent our military in. And they're not bunched up anymore." Badda-bing.

So, that's our president. What of our vice president? Is he, too, a "daddy politician"? You bet, as Donald Rumsfeld would say. Dick Cheney is a laconic Westerner, exuding an aura of competence, strength and dependability. You get the feeling that things are going to be all right if Mr. Cheney is on the case. Like his boss, he talks straight, in matter-of-fact tones. His detractors enjoy reminding us that he received a deferment in the Vietnam War--he is on the liberals' list of "chicken hawks." But few serious people consider him anything other than a prime example of the tough-minded conservative.

Then there is the secretary of defense himself. Donald Rumsfeld is almost a riot of manliness, and his moment indeed arrived on September 11. He was in his office--briefing congressmen on, among other things, the threat of terrorism--when Flight 77 slammed into the Pentagon's walls. Against the advice of some, he rushed to help the wounded. Not long after 9/11, I talked to some friends of his, in preparation for a piece. One of them said, "Look, we're not playing pitty-patty anymore. We have a foe that's proven deadly. People look for a different kind of person to run Washington--as far away from the Clinton type as you can get."

Go read the whole thing. It's a great way to get the weekend started.....

Here's the first job for President Dean:

As the administration's Iraq "policy" careens out of control like a car stolen by joy-riding teenagers, critics are confronted with the inevitable retort: "But what would you do? Be constructive!" In truth, this rejoinder is a red herring: people who had no role in creating this mess have no moral "responsibility" for solving it; the authors of the mess have. And to the extent one accepts responsibility for rescuing the situation, one implicitly believes that one actually has a role in governing this erstwhile republic. In reality, the neo-con-artists, Big Oil plutocrats, and "defense" contractors will not release their iron grip on U.S. foreign policy until their avaricious hearts cease to beat.

But in the constructive spirit of Jonathan Swift's "Modest Proposal," we herewith offer a few eminently constructive suggestions:

1. Clean house at the Pentagon. Show Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, et al., the door. Disband the Office of Special Plans (or whatever its successor might be named) and send Douglas Feith back to writing position papers for Benjamin Netanyahu. Abolish the Defense Policy Board and banish Newt Gingrich to the rubber chicken circuit and Richard Perle to the Borscht Belt. Revoke the security clearances of all these luminaries so that further damage is limited. Appoint Anthony Zinni (Gen USMC Ret.) as Secretary, and empower him to appoint, free from White House interference, subordinates of professional competence and moral probity. The same conditions would apply to his direction of the officer corps, including the Chairman, JCS.1/ And at the NSC, replace the over-credentialed and underwhelming Condoleeza Rice with a certifiable adult such as Brent Scowcrowft.

2. Rescind the reconstruction contracts of Halliburton, Bechtel and the other corporate welfare clients. The political influence of these ghoulish corporations was a prime mover in provoking the Iraq war in the first place. In Halliburton's case, its first Iraq oil field contract dates to December 2001, i.e., 15 months before the war [see note 2/], so their collusion in this tragedy is central. In any event, their over-priced, no-bid contracts are mulcting the taxpayer while hardly providing "reconstruction." Take the money they disgorge and pay able-bodied Iraqi males of military age $15 or $20 per day to wield picks and shovels for true reconstruction. The work might actually be more cost efficient, and in any case would avert the "idle hands are the Devil's playground" truism.

3. Give GEN Sanchez an ultimatum: "Kill Saddam Hussein by 31 December 2003 or you are commanding a radar site on Adak." The death of our erstwhile client and bulwark against Iran may not be functionally necessary, but would be a political boon and usufruct to salve the wounds of our national security Illuminati and justify this whole misguided operation to the public (an important consideration as November 2004 looms). And since GEN Sanchez has so often claimed that "we" are closing in on Saddam, he should bear some responsibility for turning words into deeds. It could at least justify a withdrawal from Iraq on the basis that, "there were no WMDs, but we did whack Saddam. Mission accomplished!" And why the deadline of 31 December?

4. Set a date of 31 December for withdrawal. Since the administration's initial plan was to occupy Iraq for six months, why should a stay of nine months seem like precipitate flight? It might even reduce U.S. casualties. While the current spin depicts the resistance in Iraq as robotic fanatics who laugh in the face of death, the truth is more complex. There may be some guerrillas who would kill Americans at any hazard, but if U.S. troops were going to leave Iraq in a short time in any case, some resisters might be less inclined to risk their own lives in a pointless exercise. What the United Nations or "our coalition partners" would or would not do thereafter is of secondary importance. As former Senator George Aiken famously said, "declare victory and get out."

5. Repair the damage to our military personnel. Our troops were obliged to redeem the lies of the American Enterprise Institute, The Weekly Standard, and other plague bacilli, with their time, absence from their families, and their blood. Honorable service in Iraq should net every enlisted person a bonus of $10,000, tax free, above and beyond any other special pays. Junior officers would reap $5,000; field grade officers, $2,500. General and flag officers would receive the thanks of a grateful Nation, suitable for framing. Granted, a gratuity is somewhat crass, but one does not notice many CEOs foregoing performance bonuses even when the share price of their company tanks. And given that millionaires received, on average, $86,000 back from Uncle Sam from the most recent tax cut, this proposal should not be too onerous. One is certain that Halliburton and Lockheed executives would be eager to contribute generously to the General Fund of the Treasury to defray the cost of this thank you to our men and women in uniform.

6. Appoint a special prosecutor. Armed with plenary powers of subpoena, this bulldog would comb the documents of the Defense Department, the White House, the Energy Task Force, and other agencies for any evidence that our elected public officials violated 18 U.S.C. 1001 (making false statements to Congress), 18 U.S.C. 371 (the broad anti-conspiracy statute that would apply in the case of provoking a war), or any other statute or Constitutional provision that may have been violated in prosecuting a pre-emptive war on false pretenses. Faced with prolonged hospitality at Allenwood, some of the Thors and Wotans who rule over us might be induced to practice a refreshing candor, for once.

7. Begin the greatest untangling operation since Watergate. Induce Congress (an admittedly hopeless bunch, whose membership more and more resembles the idiotic Senator Iselin in The Manchurian Candidate) to investigate the connection between the think tanks, their "defense" contractor contributors, public relations firms like Hill & Knowlton or the Benador Group, foreign agents of influence, and the Federal Government. Much as the mid-1930s Nye Committee unveiled the relationships between government boards, munitions trusts, financiers, and British propagandists, such an investigation would reveal how a gullible public was led into the quicksand of the Middle East for the sake of yet another "war to end all wars."

Thanks to The Whiskey Bar for the link.

Accountability? We don't need no stinkin' accountability:

Last February, with invasion just weeks away, sources in the Bush administration told Newsweek that they were expecting a postwar occupation of Iraq of 30 to 90 days.

"Every day you get past three months, you've got to expect peacekeepers to have a bull's-eye on their head," the sources explained.

Even at the time, a spokesman for Defense Undersecretary Douglas Feith suggested that three months might be too optimistic. It was probably wiser to think five or six months on the outside, Lt. Col. Michael Humm said.

At the time, Pentagon officials also claimed that Iraq's oil wealth would make it unnecessary to ask other countries for financial help with reconstruction. "I don't see the need for panhandling like that," the Pentagon source said.

A month later, in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz issued his own warning of how tough the occupation would be. Ruling Iraq, he said, would be like ruling liberated France after World War II.

He and his colleagues ought to be fired. Not only did they believe those fantasies, they also made their ideological pipe dreams the basis of our postwar planning, and today we're reaping the consequences.

George Bush, Friend to the Environment:

With key positions in the hands of industry veterans, the administration has been able to pursue one of its most effective stealth tactics -- steering clear of legislative battles and working instead within the difficult-to-understand, yawn-producing realm of agency regulations. It's a strategy that has served Bush well, especially in his push to give the energy industry-which donated $2.8 million to the 2000 Bush campaign-access to some of the nation's last wildlands. In Congress, where the administration's agenda must endure full public scrutiny, Bush's effort to allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has failed repeatedly. But there was little public debate over a plan to drill 66,000 coalbed methane gas wells in the Powder River Basin of Wyoming and Montana-a massive project that will result in 26,000 miles of new roads, 48,000 miles of new pipelines, and discharges of 2 trillion gallons of contaminated water, disfiguring for years the rolling hills of that landscape. That plan was hatched behind closed doors, by the secretive energy task force headed by Vice President Dick Cheney.

The Cheney task force is behind another of the administration's pet projects-protecting utilities from having to comply with a law enacted 26 years ago. Some 30,000 Americans die each year because the federal government is unwilling to take meaningful steps to enforce the Clean Air Act's standards for coal-fired power plants. Nearly 6,000 of those deaths are attributable to plants owned by a mere eight companies, according to a study by ABT Associates, which frequently conducts assessments for the EPA. (The companies are American Electric Power, Cinergy, Duke, Dynegy, FirstEnergy, SIGECO, Southern Company, and the Tennessee Valley Authority.)

I think I need a drink:

"Mexican writer and diplomat Carlos Fuentes was unmerciful. 'The invasion of Iraq might have been avoided if Bush had remained a drinker,' he said. 'Sober, he's a dangerous man.'"

I feel much safer now. You?

Six months after it was established to protect the nation from terrorism, the Department of Homeland Security is hobbled by money woes, disorganization, turf battles and unsteady support from the White House, and has made only halting progress toward its goals, according to administration officials and independent experts.

The top two officials under Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge are stepping down amid criticism from some White House officials and elsewhere in the administration. So few people want to work at the department that more than 15 people declined requests to apply for the top post in its intelligence unit -- and many others turned down offers to run several other key offices, government officials said.

Desperately needed repairs to the department's cramped, red-brick headquarters on a Navy facility in Northwest Washington have been stalled by a shortage of money. Some employees at the complex do not have the secure telephone lines required to do their work, the officials said.

As a result, the department has made little progress on some of the main challenges cited when it was created in March by merging 22 federal agencies and their 170,000 employees, according to officials in the Bush administration and Congress, as well as some outside experts. The Bush administration initially resisted establishing the department but eventually agreed.

OK all you left-wing pinko agitator dissidents. Knock off all that unpatriotic chatter. By disagreeing with Smirk & Co. we're helping the terrorists, or so says Rummy:

SHANNON, Ireland (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Monday opposition to the U.S. President was encouraging Washington's enemies and hindering his 'war against terrorism'.

Rumsfeld was speaking after a trip to Afghanistan and Iraq where he sought to highlight progress on reconstruction efforts and dampen criticism of the U.S. presence there and the almost daily casualties in a guerrilla campaign against occupation.

He said if Washington's enemies believed Bush might waver or his opponents prevail, that could increase support for their activities.

"They take heart in that and that leads to more money going into these activities or that leads to more recruits or that leads to more encouragement or that leads to more staying power," he told reporters traveling with him on his plane.

"Obviously that does make our task more difficult."

Lies lies and more lies:

After he was elected -- and very much beholden to those contributors -- Bush put Cheney in charge of developing the National Energy Policy. To do so, Cheney convened an Energy Task Force.

Cheney's selection alone was ominous: He had headed Halliburton, just the kind of big-dollar Republican energy industry contributor that had helped Bush-Cheney win the election in the first place.

The Energy Task Force might have operated in absolute secrecy, were it not for GAO. GAO is a nonpartisan agency with statutory authority to investigate "all matters related to the receipt, disbursement, and use of public money," so that it can judge the expenditures and effectiveness of public programs, and report to Congress on what it finds.

To fulfill its statutory responsibility, GAO sought documents from Vice-President Cheney relating to Energy Task Force expenditures. But in a literally unprecedented move, the White House said no.

Amazingly, it did so without even bothering to claim that the documents sought were covered by executive privilege. It simply refused.

On August 2, 2001, Vice President Cheney sent a letter -- personally signed by him -- to Congress demanding, in essence, that it get the Comptroller off his back. In the letter, he claimed that his staff had already provided "documents responsive to the Comptroller General's inquiry concerning the costs associated with the [Energy task force's] work." As I will explain later, this turned out to be a lie.